


Instructions

by Carbon65



Series: Great British Bake Off AU [2]
Category: Newsies (1992), Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Baking, Diabetes, Gen, catholicsm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 14:42:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14138178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carbon65/pseuds/Carbon65
Summary: There are too many rules and too many instructions. It’s not clear why things have to be done the way they’ve always been done, in the order they’ve always been done. Life is too short for all the stupid suggestions.





	Instructions

**Author's Note:**

> A out take from Have your cake (and eat it to) while you're waiting for an update on Race.
> 
> Warnings  
> Food mentions, vomiting, needles

Anthony “Racetrack” Higgins thinks there are too many rules and too many instructions. It’s not clear to Anthony why things have to be done the way they’ve always been done, in the order they’ve always been done. Life is too short for all the stupid suggestions.

Why aren't cold pizza and cookies breakfast? For that matter, why aren't waffles for dinner? 

Why should he walk, when he can run? And, who says that rollerskating isn’t a better way to get around school? (Ms. Marconi, apparently. Sister Catherine hadn’t really cared, as long as he didn’t roll over anyone.)

Any, seriously, why are you supposed to drink orange juice to stop your from getting sick? Orange juice tastes bad, it stings his tongue and everything tastes like oranges the rest of the day.

Instructions are stupid.

 

And then he gets sick. 

It’s a slow process. It creeps up on him. At first, he’s just tired. And hungry. But, he’s a “growing boy” (he’d really like to grow some more).

And then, he gets more tired. It’s hard to keep his head up in class. It’s hard to make it through class without getting a drink of water. It’s hard to make it through class without needing to go to the bathroom, and the boys start calling him “Piss master General”.

He pees the bed one night. He’s having a dream, and he pees the bed. And, what is he supposed to say to his mother? That, oh, it was an accident, and he promises he’ll make it to the toilet next time? His little cousin is four, and he hasn’t peed the bed in a year. Oh, God, what if she makes him wear pull ups?  
He strips the bed carefully, bundling the bottom sheet and the mattress pad together, and sticks them in the washer so no one will notice. Sal wakes up, asks him what’s happening, but he just tells his cousin to go back to sleep. It’s not morning yet.

He’s serving one of the masses after Christmas. Feast of the Holy Family, or something like that. It’s early, nine on December 27, and almost no one is in the parish. He likes serving mass at Christmas. He likes the way the incense winds through the building he’s know all his life. He likes the way the rare snow reflects off the old stained glass windows where the lead has melted so you can’t quite tell the difference between Saint Sebastian and Saint Nicholas anymore, except that Saint Sebastian has arrows and Saint Nicholas has shoes. 

Henry’s carrying the incense and the book ‘cause he’s older, and Race and Francis have candles. They get through the liturgy of the word… something about the holy family and the slaughter of the innocents, which Race thinks is kind of bullshit. Because, seriously, Harod? You could have waited. They make it through the consecration without incident, except that Francis rings the transubstantiation bell too early because Francis always rings the transubstantiation bell too early. They go to communion, get their host, and go back to sit. And then, they stand up to pray. And, that’s when it happens. Race feels himself burp, and suddenly, there’s pale pink vomit full of host and sacramental wine on the stone floor. One of the ladies, a eucharistic minister, comes up to wipe up his vomit, and Henry shoves him toward the sacraste.

 

And then, there’s the day that all he does is sleep. He curls up into his bed, and closes his eyes, because he can’t do anything else. It’s hard to climb the stairs. It’s hard to sit up at the dinner table. It’s hard to breathe. All he wants to do is sleep and throw up.

His mom takes him to the doctor. Then the hospital. They put him in the big bed, and he lays there with a million tubes and wires. He can’t really sleep anymore, he can’t do anything but throw up. His mom rubs his back with one hand and holds a kidney basin with the other as he sits on the toilet thing they’ve brought over and he pees and he tries to get the sickly yellow acid out.

They give the sickness a name. And, it comes with instructions.  
Here’s how you mix insulin, so that it goes in correctly.  
Here’s how you check your blood sugar.  
Here’s how you check your ketones.  
Here’s how you get the bubbles out of a syringe.  
Here’s how you inject yourself.  
Here’s how you count carbohydrates.  
Here’s how you eat.  
Here’s how you eat.  
Here’s how you eat, now.

There aren’t instructions to win back your parent’s trust when the thing that lost it in the first place was truly out of your control. There aren’t instructions for telling your mom you’d rather go hungry than have her come to school everyday to give you your medication and make sure you eat your lunch: peanut butter on wheat bread, carrot sticks, and white milk. There aren’t instructions for explaining to your baby sister why you don’t eat homemade pasta anymore, just store bought lasagna cut into carefully sized pieces. Because, there just aren’t instructions for how you mourn things you didn’t know you had: trust in your body, good health, and flexibility.

It turns out, however, there are instructions for calculating the number of grams of carbohydrate in any given recipe. There are instructions to turn that number of grams of carbohydrate into number of units of insulin and time of dosing, and profile. Granted, the instructions for the second part are hard, and a lot less “one size fits all” than the first set. But, it’s possible. 

It takes trial and error to get the old recipes right. Baking isn’t necessarily easier, but no one else walks into the kitchen, tastes his batter, and then announces, “this isn’t right!” and dumps in three unexpected knobs of butter and a tablespoon of maple syrup. (“That was once!” He imagines his mother telling the _New York Times._ ) And, once he figures out terms like creaming and the difference between sifted and unsifted flour, it gets a lot easier. 

He bakes with a pencil behind his ear and a measuring cup in his hand. And, then, with a scale by his side. And then a ruler. He has to be precise if he wants consistent serving sizes. And, consistent serving sizes mean consistent doses. And consistent doses mean consistent blood sugar. And, consistent blood sugar mean his parents let him keep baking and don’t say it’s time to go back to the horror of store bought foods.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Easter, Passover, Spring, and daylight savings time to any/all who celebrate.
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! Let me know what you think?


End file.
